6 Key Follow Up Principles That You Should Keep in Mind

In the business world, deals are rarely closed on day one.

It takes much nudging and nurturing before a prospect is ready to throw money at you.

Following up with prospects is so important for any sales team.

But here’s the thing with follow-up emails:

Even though they have the power to convert a "no" into a "yes," they can be extremely daunting. A series of ‘no’ replies is a morale killer, and handling rejection is tough.

Getting positive responses from your follow-up emails isn’t rocket science.

To get the best results from your follow-up emails, keep in mind these six key follow-up principles:

Define an Email Follow-Up Plan for Your Sales Team

The biggest follow-up mistake sales teams make is sending emails without a plan.

“We already know we need to send them—why do we need a plan?” you ask.

Here’s why:

Instead of relying on gut instinct, your sales reps will have a clear goal for each follow-up and know exactly how many times they should email prospects before calling it a day.

Let’s examine how you can build a follow-up email plan for your sales team. (Note that these steps will vary for each company.)

Step 1: State Why You are Following Up

Start by answering this question: What’s the purpose of your follow-up email campaign?

Is it to urge them to book a demo, take advantage of the limited-time discount your company is offering, or provide more information that you need?

If you observe closely, you’ll see two things clearly: First, there can be many reasons for your sales reps to follow up with a prospect. Second, each prospect is at a different journey stage, so each situation demands a different follow-up approach.

Using a purpose-driven approach will ensure that the sales reps are fully aware of the end goal and are better prepared to handle the prospect's objections.

Now that you understand the need for a clearly defined purpose let’s move on to the next step: How often should your sales reps follow up?

Step 2: Specify How Often You Should Follow Up

Now, that’s a difficult question to answer, so before we go any further, let’s look at some statistics about follow-up emails:

A study by Iko-System found that the follow-up response rate varies from 14% for the second email to 10% for the fifth and a surprising 27% for the sixth email. Another study by Yesware found that even the 10th email in the sequence got a seven percent response rate.

This is very confusing, right? Should you send six emails, or 10, or 16? But here’s a formula that works every time:

1. Pick the number of emails that makes sense for your business: Look at your past follow-up email data for patterns and find that “golden number” where you see most conversions. Also, take into account the price and plans of your product. A higher-priced product/ plan needs a ton of approvals, which may add to a delay in response.
2. Once you’ve reached this number, move the contact to another list and follow up again after a couple of months.

I’ve said it before:

“I have a simple philosophy: I follow up as many times as necessary until I get a response. I don’t care what the response is as long as I get one. If someone tells me they need another 14 days to get back to me, I will put that in my calendar and ping them again in 14 days.”

Here’s the follow-up formula that proposes:

• Follow-up #1: Day 1
• Follow-up #2: Day 3
• Follow-up #3: Day 7
• Follow-up #4: Day 14
• Follow-up #5: Day 28
• Follow-up #6: Day 58
• And then every 30 days after that.

Sales reps can’t chase a prospect for eternity—unless the deal gets you millions of dollars. Reps can use their time effectively by sticking to a fixed follow-up formula, such as the one above.

If you’re a Close user, you’re in luck. You can create simple follow-up reminders within the CRM.

The CRM will send you a notification on the day the next follow-up is due.

Make it Easy for Sales Reps to Create Emails.

You know that managing productivity is one of the biggest challenges for sales reps. They often get caught up in the daily humdrum and cannot focus on selling. Salesforce’s 2024 State of Sales report found that sales reps spend 30 percent of their time selling!

Sending follow-up emails is one task that can derail your sales reps from more critical duties. And that’s why your reps need to have ready access to tools that can make the whole process faster.

Here’s what you can do to help:

1. Create ready-to-use templates: Creating templates that require minimum tweaks can save sales reps a lot of time. Here are a few templates you can use for inspiration.
2. Make it easy for sales reps to find content: They often find themselves lost when searching for the right resource—a resource attached to a follow-up email could significantly boost conversions. So, make that content accessible to sales reps. You can either arrange folders or drives in a practical arrangement (if using G-Suite) or use a solution like Docurated from Quark.

Bring Out the Best in Your Follow-Up Emails

The best follow-up emails are the ones that provide a great experience for the recipient—they are remarkable, offer value, are functional, and are respectful.

So, how can sales reps ensure their email score at each level of this pyramid? Here are a few pointers:

1. Focus on Personalization

It’s a small ask that can make a big difference to the recipient. Personalization isn’t just a feel-good factor; it also has business benefits—personalized emails have a higher chance of getting opened because they seem relevant and stand out in the recipient’s inbox.

Backlinko analyzed 12 million outreach emails and found some amazing data on personalization. According to the study:

• Personalized subject lines boost response rate by 30.5 percent.

• Emails with personalized message bodies have a 32.7 percent better response rate than those that don’t personalize their messages.

Another interesting finding from this study is that only 8.5% of outreach emails receive a response. If we connect the data on personalization with the response number, it is safe to say that any amount of personalization is good for outreach. So, whether it is personalization in the email subject line, in the body of the email, or both, your follow-up emails should make room for it.

Consider using Close's Email Subject Line Generator for seamless and effective personalization in your outreach emails. This powerful tool goes beyond crafting subject lines and helps you tailor your email message to each recipient.

2. Check for Correct Spelling and Grammar

There’s nothing more annoying than a poorly written email. It impacts how the recipient perceives you—not in a good way.

Jane Vignovic and Lori Foster Thompson, North Carolina State University psychologists, recorded people’s perceptions of a potential colleague based on an error-ridden email message. Participants who read the email perceived the sender to be untrustworthy.

Bottom line: If prospects feel they can’t trust you, chances are they won’t do business with you.

3. Include Value Bombs

Getting prospects to open an email is one thing; getting a response is another. And that’s where value bombs come in. You probably won’t get the kind of response you want when you send a follow-up email without factoring in value.

What is a value bomb? Do you have a resource the recipient could use? A special offer or discount code to promote the sale? Maybe a free 30-minute evaluation?

Think about what would be valuable for your prospect, and share it with them.

4. Be Human

With hundreds of emails thronging their inbox, getting your prospect’s attention is more complex than ever. That’s why it’s essential to make every email memorable. Ensure that your message is courteous and friendly, gets right to the point, and doesn’t require the prospect to take multiple actions.

For example, if you’re urging them to book a demo, make it easy by providing a built-in option to book a time. Scheduling tools like Calendly can come in handy here.

Calendly is a great tool we've used for a long time at Close (although we recently switched our team to SavvyCal). However, it also has some limitations. If, for example, you want to add brand or company assets, you'll have to look into Calendly alternatives.

Get Innovative with Your Email

Good follow-up emails have one thing in common: They stand out. In the crowded world of email, a standout experience begins with the subject line and continues in the copy.

Many great guides will tell you how to nail the subject line (including our cold email subject line guide), so let’s look at what you can do with your copy.

Using GIFs and videos can help you stand out in a busy inbox. Not only is that kind of content fresh, but it’s also visual—a medium we’ve all grown to love.

The folks at Strikingly make clever use of GIFs in their emails. Here’s an example:

In this email, Strikingly used two kinds of GIFs: stock GIFs, like our friend Bill Hader's, and a personalized GIF of the sender. These are tricks you can use in your own follow-up emails, too.

What about video?

Salesforce used video voicemails to follow up with prospects that had stopped responding. After receiving the video, a lot of their prospects said no, but sometimes, that’s what you need to re-adjust your plan.

A tool like Soapbox can be handy for creating video-based pitches. Soapbox users can personalize video thumbnails with GIFs, loops, and text overlays to make their pitches even more appealing.

Target Your Prospects on Multiple Channels

A report by Google reveals how B2B prospects buy products today:

A majority of offline purchasers are influenced online, and they’re doing vast amounts of independent research. Before making a purchase, today’s typical B2B shopper might consult online catalogs, perform multiple Google Searches, or visit branded websites. They look for product specifications and brand comparisons, and they try to figure out where to find the best deals or promotions.

What does this information mean for your follow-up process? It’s a good idea to target your prospects through multiple channels once they’ve shown an interest in your product. This tactic will give them a break from your follow-up emails while still keeping your brand alive in their minds.

Installing a Facebook pixel on your website, retargeting prospects, being present on social media channels, and participating in communities where your prospects hang out are all powerful ways of staying connected beyond email. The idea is to let prospects get to know your product outside their inbox so they’ll be ready to commit when you come knocking again.

Be Smart with Follow-Up

Deals aren’t closed in the show-up; they are closed in the follow-up.

That is true; you need to be consistent with follow-up. But here’s the thing that you need to remember:

While follow-up is crucial, you don’t want your sales reps to waste time following up with prospects that will never close. You don’t want them to be “working on their pipeline” when it’s filled with names that won’t see value in your product.

So here are a few pointers that will help you tighten your follow-up process:

1. Quantify the economic value of the deal—is it worth it?
2. Gauge when the prospect can commit to your product—in two months? In a year? Never? Trust us, you’ll see the signs early on.
3. Determine whether your prospect is just window-shopping. Can you offer a hook that’s hard to resist?

At Close, we like to believe that following up isn’t hard—our fears make the deal fall through. You can’t live in “maybe land,” nor can you be “hopelessly optimistic.” While persistence is key, you must be smart about your follow-up emails; otherwise, you’re just wasting time.

Win Your Sales with These 6 Key Follow-Up Strategies

It’s only human to assume that a prospect isn’t keen to talk to you since they haven’t responded to your emails. But research shows that follow-up is worth it—it just takes time and persistence.If you want to hit your quotas and score conversions for your team, you need to keep in mind the principles we just talked about:

• Define an email follow-up plan for your sales team
• Make it easy for sales reps to create emails
• Bring out the best in your follow-up emails
• Get innovative with your emails
• Target prospects on multiple channels
• Be smart with follow-up

We hope that these six principles will be useful for your next follow-up campaign. If you’d like more insights on following up with sales prospects, download a free copy of my book, The Follow-Up Formula.